In the beginning, keep it simple! Share this guide with your team members. Work together to incorporate these best practices into developing long-form content for your blog.
You can take the service of a professional SEO company to optimize your long-form posts.
Why are long-form posts so important for SEO?
Long-form posts should be a cornerstone of your blogging strategy. Research suggests that the average adult attention span is now as low as eight seconds, making it hard for bloggers to build an audience.
That’s one reason that long-form content is so important.
Longer blog posts have been shown to perform better in search results, which makes sense from a psychological perspective — audiences are less likely to click on something that looks boring and intimidating.
With the right content and structure, you can attract and keep readers’ attention and gain more traffic, leads and sales.
SEO Best Practices for Optimizing your long-form posts
Here’s a quick and handy SEO checklist that you can use for optimizing your blog posts
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Understand the difference between short-form and long-form content
It’s possible to publish long-form content that is not optimized for SEO. For example, you can publish long-form content that is not optimized for user experience. I still think that’s a bad idea, but I’m acknowledging that it’s possible.
Short-form refers to tweets, status updates, or other things that are usually less than a few hundred words long. Long-form refers to any content that contains more words than a tweet.
The reason why there is a distinction between short-form and long-form content is because of search engines. If you’re going to write something as valuable as the 25,000-word guide to getting started with writing, you might as well optimize it so people can find it via search engines.
The long-form content trend is synonymous with quality content. Even though short-form content may be easier to digest, it is not as engaging as a longer form of content that has taken the time to develop and provide the reader with more information. Because of this, long-form content makes it easier for you to rank for various keywords within your niche.
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Write long-form content for users, not search engines
Optimizing your long-form content for search engines is fine, but don’t forget that your primary audience is the reader. If the point of writing a long-form piece of content is not to rank well in Google, then what’s the end?
Write for search engines and users at the same time. Think about how readers will find and consume your content: what keywords will they use, how will they arrive at your page, and what do they expect to see once they get there?
Don’t try to “trick” search engines into ranking your page higher than it deserves to be organized, as this could lead you down a slippery slope. Instead, focus on creating high-quality content that readers will love.
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Use SEO tools to check your keyword structure, sections and URLs
When writing long-form content, it’s essential to use the exact keywords/keyphrases throughout the piece. For example, if you are writing an article about cars, include specific details about the make and model of cars you talk about in your writing. That way, when people search for information about particular cars on Google, they will find your article.
To get more traffic from search engines, use SEO tools such as Google Keyword Planner or Ubersuggest to find popular keyword combinations that include words from your article. Incorporate these keywords into your piece in a natural way. It’s best not to overdo it by stuffing keywords in places they don’t belong or using a ridiculous number of keywords.
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Don’t forget those ever-important headlines!
The first thing you need to know when it comes to SEO best practices for optimizing long-form content is that you need to optimize your headline. Not only that, but you want to optimize your meta description too.
Your meta description tells people what your article is about before they click on it to read the article, and the meta title tells people what the theme is actually about when they see it in a list on a search engine results page.
The first thing you will notice as you write out a title for a blog post is that it needs to be bold so it can stand out from all the other titles. The second thing you’ll need to remember is to keep keywords in mind. Be strategic about where you place your keyword phrases, and don’t overdo it because this could result in a negative SEO effect. When writing out your title, make sure to include at least one keyword phrase per headline.
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Add links to internal and external sources (without keyword stuffing) to support your readers as they dig deeper.
The links you add to your post, both internal and external, can significantly impact its SEO. Some links have a powerful influence on how Google views your post. A link from a high-quality site is a significant boost to a post’s authority. And a link with a keyword in it is even better for boosting rankings.
With these points in mind, make sure you add relevant links to your content to support the story you are telling and get readers interested in digging deeper.
Here are some best practices for adding links to your long-form blog posts:
1) Make sure you aren’t keyword stuffing – You may be tempted to stuff your article full of keywords in the hope that it will help with ranking higher in search results. Resist this temptation! Spammy or keyword-stuffed articles look unprofessional and can get your site penalized in the search engines. Instead, use keywords naturally in the article when they are relevant.
2) Add internal links within your post – Internal linking helps readers navigate through an article and find related information faster than if they had to click “next page” or dig for more information on their own. It also helps Google understand what other content on your site is related to the topic at hand.
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Optimize the load time of your post
When you publish a post, it is imperative to optimize the load time. The search engines are getting more and more sensitive to this factor. By optimizing this factor, you will do your article an excellent service.
When you write a blog post, you should aim to have it load as fast as possible. Not just on mobile devices, where every second counts, but also on desktop computers.
Because Google measures your site’s load time, you will be penalized if the load time is too high.
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Break it into parts-Opportunities with paragraph blocks
If your article is very long, consider breaking it up into smaller sections or chapters. This will make it easier for readers to take in the information and help with your SEO ranking.
You can use subheadings to break your article into parts too. By using bolded headers and subheadings, you can grab your reader’s attention and guide them through the article.
Conclusion
A well-researched article is a great way to drive traffic to your blog. Blog SEO is a long-tail effort. Optimizing your blog is about writing for your readers today.
Long-form content is not dead. It’s still important for SEO.
